Sometimes life gets tough.
Sometimes your morning workout is cut short because your alarm clock broke.
Sometimes there’s a ton of traffic and therefore you can’t stay in the gym for as long as you want to.
Sometimes you might get kidnapped and be forced to do battle in an underground fight club, thus cutting out precious gym time.
The bottom line is – there are many reasons for why people can’t stay in the gym as long as they want to and that’s fine.
Sometimes you only have 25-30 minutes to do what you gotta do, but the problem is that most people don’t know how to intelligently structure their workout if they were only given 25-30 minutes.
Most people believe that they need 1 hour to get a good workout in and that’s simply not true. You can actually get a pretty decent workout done in 25-30 minutes if you know what you’re doing.
So since I love you guys so much I laid out a quick and dirty workout that you can get done in 25-30 minutes.
Here’s the workout:
- Incline dumbbell press – 2 sets of 6 reps (2 minutes rest between sets)
- Weighted chin ups – 2 sets of 6 reps (2 minutes rest between sets)
- Upright barbell row – 2 sets of 12 reps (1-1.5 minutes rest between sets)
- Barbell front squat – 2 sets of 6 reps (2 minutes rest between sets)
- Reverse dumbbell lunges – 2 sets of 12 reps per leg (1.5 minutes rest between sets)
Note: This workout should be done on non-consecutive days for no more than 4x per week max.
There you go, quick and dirty.
Not looking to just maintain? Give this upper/lower split a shot.
In my opinion, the workout laid out here is better than what 90% of the people in gym would do in an hour. If given an hour, most people would just do some half-assed weight lifting, followed by some mindless running and maybe a few ab crunches.
With this routine, you have everything laid out for you.
Also the reason I set everything to 2 sets is because 2 sets is just the right amount to stimulate a muscle so that it is able to maintain it’s current size and strength. As long as you’re using heavy weights like you’ll be using in this workout, you should be able to maintain all your current muscle mass with no problem.
If you guys like this workout, let me know in the comments below and I’ll post the home workout “no equipment” version of this workout?
Photo credit: Dietmar Temps
Here is the question that I find SO difficult to get a straight answer. Everywhere I read about muscle mass is that… MUSCLE weighs more than fat? But isn’t a pound is a pound no matter if its a feather lb of a penny lb? It’s just muscle is denser right? I still don’t get how it works…
1 pound of muscle weighs exactly the same as one pound of fat. Muscle is simply denser than fat.
Think of it in terms of volume – 1 pound of fat will simply take up more volume than 1 pound of muscle, but in the end they weigh exactly the same.
So when people work out and they say they (gained) weight because they simply (gained) muscle it’s not true right? This is the reason why I’m trying to get rid of the scale and use body comp instead..
Well… it depends. If people are simply using a scale to measure whether they gained muscle or not, then it’s not too accurate. A lot of that weight can simply be from water, the food you eat, or even fat.
The scale is typically my least favorite method of measuring progress.
Hey..great post! would appreciate it if you could post the home workout ” no equipment ” version..where possible, please include a video demonstration of the recommended exercise ( its so much easier to follow that way! )
Also, am guessing the above workout is more suitable for a man..I am a girl so please provide something appropriate for a 200 pound, overweight girl! thanks!
Thanks Sue, I’ll definitely work on that post.
Thanks..looking forward to it!
Good work great post what do you think of this workout that i picked up from builtlean.com it is a circuit
Dumbell squat-15 reps
Reverse lunges with dumbells-16 reps
Pushups-till failure
Pullups-till failure
Medicine ball twist-20 reps
You repeat the circuit 3-4 times
What do you think of this workout?
Seems ok if you have limited weights.
Ok tnx alot:)
This looks good. How much weight should I lift doing this? And will it work the Biceps and Triceps?
Pick a weight that you can only lift for the specific rep range. For example, if it says 6-8 reps, pick a weight that you can only lift for 8 reps max.
And yes, it will work your arms.